


Denying Leviathan

by SusanaR



Series: Green-Eyed Trickster [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012), The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternative Universe - FBI, Chris-centric, Crossover, Ezra-centric, Ezra-is-Loki, Friendship, Gen, Loki Angst, Loki Does What He Wants, Loki Feels, Loki-centric, Male Friendship, Mentors, Mythology - Freeform, Origin Story, Post-Movie, brave Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 04:27:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/908913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SusanaR/pseuds/SusanaR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris Larabee isn't afraid of Leviathan. Which is a good thing, because Ezra isn't Ezra Standish, he's an age-old trickster God who's already tried to invade the Earth to save it once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Denying Leviathan

**Author's Note:**

> This story brought to you by an idea which occurred to my muse and would not easily be dismissed.

In Chris Larrabee's considered opinion, this particular case had been a flub-up of epic proportions from its inauspicious beginning to its probable disastrous end. And it hadn't even been it hadn't been Team Seven's mess. No, Special Agent Winters had brought them into it, after one of his agents messed up and another went missing. 

Yes, Winters was a friend of Buck's (wasn't everyone?), but that normally wouldn't have made the man think of them. No, getting roped into this fiasco was either Vin's fault for being too good at his job, or Ezra's fault for being too good at his job. When Chris decided which one was to blame, he was going to make that unfortunate soul responsible for all of their office's paperwork for a month. Chris almost hoped that it was Vin's fault, because if it was Ezra's they'd likely all end up with pink stains on their hands and shirts from malfunctioning pens again, or worse. Punishing Ezra was almost always punishing himself, but Chris was determined to treat the con-man like he'd treat any other member of the team, Ezra's lamentable creativity and other...talents...aside. And it wasn't as if Vin or J.D. were that much worse.

Right now, Chris was standing across from Ezra, playing the role of a competing bidder for the poor drugged-up prostitute tied to a chair in the middle of a warehouse. In Chris's opinion, human traffickers were some of the worst parasites afflicting humanity. He knew that Ezra felt the same. He felt Ezra's burning desire to fool these merchants of misery to believe the agents' act, to make them believe in the lie the agents presented. To send the feds up the next link in the chain of horror that would lead to the men making money off of the kidnapping and sale of innocents. Chris shared that desire, but the last federal agent to come in here had botched the bid badly, giving himself away and getting his partner worse than killed. She had disappeared. And Chris didn't think that they would find her today, because these criminals had learned caution. He hoped that Ezra could accept that. He hoped that Winters' man standing beside him wouldn't make it worse. Special Agent Calvin Able was an earnest man, a good man, but not a man suited to undercover work. Winters should have kept him off the streets, in Chris's opinion. 

"Police." A street urchin whispered as he ran to the side of 'Mr. Smith,' the cruel-eyed man running the auction. "Down the street, in unmarked cars." 

Winters' man Calvin stirred uneasily. Chris stepped on his foot, but that didn't stop Agent Able from making a strident protest. "This deal has to go down, now!"

"What, are you one of the feds?" Snarled one of Mr. Smith's bodyguards. 

"Now, now. We're all just here to do business." Ezra said, his clipped mid-western accent (false) and mild expression (equally put-on) completely masking his own impatience and anxiety. "Let's calm down, and perhaps make arrangements through different channels to reconvene at a more...convenient time." 

Ezra was willing to postpone a meet if he had to, in order to keep worming himself and their investigation closer to the true heart of corruption. But not every situation could be turned to their advantage, no matter how perfectly Chris let Ezra play their cards. 

"A reasonable suggestion, Mr. Evans, but I am afraid we simply can't take the chance that any of you are here on false pretenses." Smith replied with an insincere smile as his men drew their weapons. 

"You'll never get away with this!" Agent Able swore, even as Chris knocked him down under the cover of some packing crates. Only Ezra didn't panic, merely holding his hands up to show that he was unarmed. 

"An unfortunate obstacle in an otherwise profitable arrangement." Ezra said smoothly, gesturing to Chris and Able, "But not an insurmountable one. I am happy to go with you gentlemen to a place of your choosing until you can verify my bona fides. Once your entirely justifiable caution is satisfied, then, perhaps, I can purchase this lovely young lady, and several of her fellows, at a highly agreeable rate." Ezra leered at the poor petrified woman, "Such charmingly reticent beauty is QUITE valuable, in certain markets." 

No one else played a creep better than Ezra. He could make himself believe his own lies, hide everything real deep some place inside. Deep enough that scum like Smith never stopped to question the facade. 

Mr. Smith paused, his men's guns still focused on Chris and the unfortunate Agent Able. SWAT was coming, still too far away to make a difference, but close enough that Chris could hear them. And he could feel Vin above them, lying on the rafters, with a perfect shot at the goon with the best angle on Chris and Calvin. Vin's secondary target would be whoever was closest to Ezra, and then anyone who was still armed. 

"Perhaps something could be...arranged." Mr. Smith said pensively. "If the right price were to be offered." 

Slowly, very slowly, Ezra reached into his pocket to pull out a hand-rolled cigar and light it with a solid-silver lighter. Smith didn't see anything amiss, merely 'Evans' offering further evidence of his wealth and savoir-faire. But to Chris, it was a signal. And to Vin. A sign that Ezra wanted Vin to shoot him, in order to convince Smith et. al. that Ezra was for real. The wounded Ezra would then make his 'escape' with Smith and his men. Hopefully leaving the poor woozy girl who was their merchandise behind, and being led straight to someone with more power and reach than Smith. It was a long shot. Ezra gently shook the cigar in his hand, telling Vin to take the shot. 

Chris, from behind the boxes where he'd taken cover, emphatically gestured for Vin to wait. Even if Chris had been willing to let Vin shoot Ezra and 'just' miss him, which he might be under normal circumstances, this situation was too volatile. Added to that, Ezra was reckless, determined and crafty enough to move into the bullet's path just far enough to come out with an injury real enough to add verisimilitude to his tale without being severe enough to truly hamper him. But Chris didn't want Ezra to risk getting shot, just for that. And besides, the unfortunate woman was tied up just behind Ezra, too close. Vin was good enough that he might - might- be able to take the shot without endangering the girl OR hitting that idiot Ezra, but it was not a chance Chris was willing to take. 

Ezra stepped just a shade to the left and back, closer to Smith and further from the girl. Then he signaled Vin to shoot again. 

It wasn't enough. Chris gave the counter sign, then moved around the boxes to catch Ezra's eyes. The con-man was determined to get his way in this. Chris's steely blue eyes silently ordered his agent to drop it. In the depths of Ezra's fathomless green eyes, Leviathan stirred. 

It was a good thing that Chris didn't fear Leviathan. 

Chris Larabee fought Leviathan every morning, when he got out of bed. The liquor cabinet in his den taunted him as he passed through the kitchen on his way to his front door. 

He went best two falls out of three with temptation every time he drove past a liquor store. Every time he walked past a bar. And again at night, passing the liquor cabinet again. It was at night when he was most likely to weaken. 

Chris Larabee knew the darkness. Knew what it was to have given up even the fear of what oblivion held. He would have surrendered to it before, after Sara and Adam died. Embraced it, more like. But then there was Buck, for a time. Long enough of a time for the thought to be born that perhaps the deaths of his wife and son hadn't been just an accident. And that kept him going, for awhile. Although he wouldn't have truly called it living.

He took a job in law enforcement, during those shadow days. Not because he believed in justice. No, he just wanted vengeance. But for vengeance, Chris had needed access to databases and warrants and weapons. Legal access. He wasn't a man who broke the law easily, though he'd bend it for a spell. 

Chris had always given the federal government an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. He'd put his life on the line and put away his fair share of murderers and scum, but he hadn't taken his work home with him very often. No, those early mornings and late nights when he won the battle against the spirits, those were the times when he looked for the breadcrumbs left by Sara and Adam's killers. 

Until the Navajo case. Bodies had started showing up on the reservation, horribly mutilated. Men, women, and worst of all children, who had been cruelly tortured to death. The tribal authorities cooperated, but public doubt still turned against the Indians. 

It hadn't been Chris's case. No one in the federal government had wanted it. But then Vin had asked Chris to take a look at it. Vincent Tanner, the young bounty hunter who had defended Chris's sometimes-forensic specialist, Nathan Jackson, back when Nate had been falsely accused of tampering with evidence. So Chris had taken the case, because the Navajo were Vin's foster-father's people. 

Chris's normal team had wanted nothing to do with it. But Buck was willing to give it a try, for old time's sake. Buck Wilmington always had been crazy like that, bless his philandering heart. And Buck had a way of attracting crazy. Not like Chris was sane, but leaving a full scholarship at Harvard in order to be a lawman wasn't something that made sense to anyone but J.D. Dunne. If that boy was even twenty-one, Chris would eat his own boots, then Buck's. 

Chris's boss's boss, Assistant Director Orrin Travis, was willing to approve Buck's transfer, and Nate's. He was willing to approve hiring Vin and J.D., and Nate's crazy old ex-army friend Josiah, despite the grizzled Vietnam veteran's questionable psych evaluations. Travis's widowed daughter-in-law Mary was a journalist, and she was sure that the tribe had nothing to do with it. Sure, and willing to publicly insist on it. Chris wasn't sure at first. His own intuition said that the Navajo were telling the truth, but so much of the forensic evidence suggested otherwise. 

When Mary's little boy disappeared, Chris knew that she'd been right all along. And he knew that he was running out of time. That was when Chris blackmailed Travis into hiring Ezra. 

Ezra Standish was an agent on his way out. He'd been the linchpin in taking out a huge ring of drug runners down south. Hundreds of low and mid-level dealers arrested, and more than a dozen major distributors and their backers. Who had included several upright businessmen, a state senator, and a U.S. congressman's chief aide. But scuttlebutt said that Standish had gotten too close, been undercover for too long. Worse, that he'd sacrificed his own partner to close the case. Standish had had to leave the Atlanta branch because they wouldn't have him anymore. And Ezra was headed for a discharge from their own office at the end of the fiscal year. A nominally respectable departure, a reduction in force, rather than being fired in a justifiable termination. 

Chris hadn't been sure that the accusations against Standish didn't have some truth to them. He could read a man pretty well, yet he couldn't get a good read on Ezra. But young Billy Travis was running out of time, and Chris had needed a dishonest man. Ezra hadn't wanted to get involved, but his reputation had meant something to him. Not enough to save his career, but enough not to want Chris to go public with Ezra's illegal gambling schemes and get him fired from the Agency. Standish hadn't minded leaving under a cloud, but he'd wanted to go on his own time, on his own terms. It had been important enough to Ezra that he'd agreed to join what had ceased being a case for them, and become a cause. 

Ezra joining the case turned the tide in their favor. 

"Kokopelli." The Navajo had whispered, when Ezra showed up in Chris's wake. 

"The native American trickster god." Josiah had explained. 

Vin's eyes had twinkled, and he'd jokingly asked what Ezra had in the sack of tricks that Kokopelli always brought with him. 

"More than you carry between your ears, Mr. Tanner, if we are very lucky." Had been the southerner's soft, mocking reply. 

Everyone else had looked to the Navajo as the suspects for the murders, or maybe the city gangs. Not even Chris had suspected the clerk at the city land surveyor's office. Chris had developed an irrational dislike for the officious jerk, but he'd never looked deeper. 

"Not all predators show their fangs." Ezra had insisted. "And many of the most successful monsters hide their villainy behind a mild manner." 

The surveyor's clerk led them to the city's most prosperous up-and-coming construction company. Ezra had gone undercover there, as a potential investor, with Vin entering at the same time with a competing offer. In a single day, Ezra had managed to convince the firm's Chief Financial Officer to drop his snow-white act, and accept a hefty bribe to bring Ezra in on a "special project." Chris, listening in on the other end of the wire, had been impressed at first, and then horrified, and scared for Vin. 

Ezra played a criminal well, and a sociopath even better. The CFO and his cat's paw the murderous clerk had been so careful. Yet how quickly Ezra convinced them both that he thought the sadistic murders a clever way to discredit the Navajo in order to cheaply buy lands contested by the tribe. By signaling Vin to object and then 'beating' Vin into 'unconsciousness' to keep their nefarious plans a secret, Ezra won them over so thoroughly that they showed him Billy, as they discussed their plans for the child

"We could use a man like you." The crooked CFO said to Ezra, after the con-man theorized that flaying the boy alive would be the most powerful way of furthering their cause. 

"There are no men like me." Ezra had said, the confident smile on his face visible even over the wire. Then Ezra had knocked both Billy and the battered-but-still-mobile Vin out of the window into the card-board filled dumpster below, without any way of knowing that SWAT had jumped the gun, and that the boy and Vin would likely have been shot in the crossfire if Ezra hadn't acted. 

Chris had wanted to kill Ezra that day, and he'd wanted to kill the con-man over a dozen times since then. But Ezra was good at his job, and he was lucky. Their silver-tongued liar, and their good-luck charm. A situation could go to hell, and Ezra would walk out alive and bring Chris's other men safely back with him. It was Ezra's particular gift, and Chris treasured him for it. 

"Kokopelli." The Hopi children sang, after Ezra told them stories and taught them his magic tricks.

"Coyote." Said the Navajo shaman, and Nathan's Rain looked at Ezra with new eyes. 

"Fae." Said Chris's neighbor, old Netty Wells. Her grandmother had come over from Ireland, where they still told tales of fairy changelings. 

Chris's gut told him that they were right, in that there was something 'other' about Ezra. But Ezra had been faithful to them, except that one time, near the beginning. And Chris believed in second chances. Ezra hadn't, he didn't think, at least not until they'd given him one. Since then, Ezra had used his 'other' to protect them. 

"Mutant." Said the other federal agents, but they said it quietly. Or at least they did after Buck had asked. Everyone liked Buck, and in time, Ezra became theirs, too. 

Chris didn't think much on Ezra's 'other-ness.' Chris was a man who respected secrets. Even after his well-meaning team pried into all of his, and then stood by him through the firestorm that was chasing and finding Sara and Adam's killers. 

By then, Ezra was Chris's just as much as the rest of his team. So, when Chris found out the truth about Ezra, he kept it to himself. They all did. 

But Chris didn't forget it. When he commanded Ezra's obedience those times that the trickster had other ideas, Chris knew now that he looked into the bottomless green eyes of Leviathan. Knew that Ezra could turn on them, because Ezra wasn't really Ezra. Hadn't ever been, not as long as they had known him. 

It was a good thing, that Chris didn't fear Leviathan.

If he had, he might have budged. But he held firm, even knowing that Ezra could force his confrontation - or almost any other - to go his way. Ezra yielded, and was arrested along with Smith. After Smith and Ezra's cover identity made bail, Ezra and the team would get another chance to hunt these foul predators to their leader. 

Ezra wasn't happy, but Chris didn't need Ezra happy. He knew how far Ezra would go to protect the greater goal. Hell, Chris even recognized that risking both Ezra and the girl getting hurt would have been the best, the surest way to put an end to this human trafficking ring before it sowed more harm and ruined more lives. But those were risks that on the balance weren't worth taking, and Chris had to make those calls because Ezra didn't know how to. 

Team Seven's resident demi-god was one thousand and ninety years old, going on nineteen. He'd invaded their world as a ploy to prevent the rise of Thanos the Destroyer, and he'd committed hundreds of real crimes, including murders, in the course of seeing that 'case' through. 'Ezra' - well, Loki - was immortal. Looking at the big picture meant something different to him than it did to most humans. For most of Loki's life, he'd been the only trickster in an army of honest men, the only one willing to lie to protect the interests of Asguard and the Aesir. 

How exactly Loki had ended up in the Atlanta division of the FBI under the name of Ezra Standish was a long story, and one that Chris still didn't completely understand. Vin and Josiah seemed to, and that was enough for Chris. Ezra's intentions were largely good, and that was enough for Chris. But someone needed to rein Ezra in, to deny Leviathan its way when Team Seven must be men and not monsters or gods, even if being the latter would be a more efficient way of saving lives while protecting their own. 

Chris could do that, because he wasn't afraid of Leviathan.

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies for the unpolished nature of this story. Thank you for reading it anyway. I have drafts written for Ezra's POV on this story and a few one-shots with the other Avengers, so please do let me know if you find the ideas interesting and you'd like to read more. Thanks!


End file.
